Club Luna

"Wow this is sweet!" Melody exclaimed as she looked around. "I bet you've had some pretty awesome parties here?"

Paige grimaced slightly, "Not really. My parents aren't the 'awesome party' types, and they definitely don't want me throwing wild parties while they're away."

"Anyways there's soda and water and stuff there if you want a drink? Then make yourself comfortable and we'll get started," she added.

The shape-shifter was the last one to arrive, and now that she was here our club leader was eager to get the meeting started. It was almost five o'clock Tuesday afternoon, and we were meeting at Paige's place for a change. We were all in the fancy den in the basement, there were cold drinks over at the bar, the huge TV was on and playing the screensaver from Paige's laptop.

Melody got a can of soda then settled into one of the big comfy chairs, while our club leader sat back down on the other sofa next to her girlfriend. As usual I was in between Kaylee and Nina, the three of us had claimed the other sofa for ourselves. And our two wolfgirls were cuddling together in another of the big comfy-looking chairs.

The rest of us already had drinks, most of the other girls had soda while me and Kaylee had water and Nina had some juice. And there were bowls of chips and popcorn set out, incase anyone felt like a snack.

Once everyone was ready Paige got things started, "It's been a week now since we visited those coordinates in the nature reserve, and since we discovered that cave. I know some of us have been busy, but when I asked around yesterday it sounded like we've all got things to report."

After a sip of her cola she added, "If you don't mind I'm going to go first, since I have some potentially worrying news."

Paige set her drink down and picked up her laptop, and a moment later the huge TV was displaying a close-up picture of part of a tree trunk. The tall brunette explained, "The day after we found that cave, me and Brooke went back to set up a trail-cam. I found what looked like the perfect place for it, where it'd be securely mounted out of sight on the trunk of this pine tree. From there it would have a clear view of the cave mouth, so it would be able to capture anyone entering or leaving the cave."

She tapped something on her laptop and that same image had some bright pink circles drawn on it, highlighting some marks on the tree trunk. Paige pointed at the screen, "When I went to attach my trail-cam to the tree I noticed these marks there? Those are the same sort of marks my trail-cam can leave, and they were fresh. I'm positive someone else had a camera up there, and it was removed not long before me and Brooke went to put my cam up."

"We checked around for footprints in the snow," Brooke added. "All our prints were still there from our visit the day before so it was really hard to tell for sure, but we think there was another set of boot tracks that didn't seem to belong to any of us. We only found a couple of them, but they definitely came after our first visit."

Paige tapped her laptop and brought up a picture of a boot print in the snow, "It's not a clear enough image for us to identify, but it's over-top of the tracks we left last Tuesday. I think it's pretty obvious someone else had a camera watching the cave entrance, odds are they now have pictures of the seven of us arriving, and leaving the cave."

Brooke looked at Melanie then my little sister as she added, "That means someone probably has pictures of Melanie in her wolf-girl form, and they might have even caught something when Nina used magic to clear the snow away from the cave entrance."

"Crud," Melanie sighed. "So we're thinking this was a trap after all?"

Our club leader sighed, "Maybe? That's our first mystery I guess. Who sent Brooke those texts, and are they related to whoever may have got us on camera."

"What about all the stuff you found inside the cave? That's still pretty strange too, right?" Melody asked. "And did you set up your own camera Paige, or did you and Brooke decide to forget the idea and just clear out?"

Paige shook her head, "We left my cam there on Wednesday. Brooke and I went back on Sunday to get it. It was still there, and there were a few hundred pictures on the memory card. I spent an hour or so going through them Sunday night. Most of the images were garbage, there was that winter storm Thursday night and the motion sensors tripped over and over from the falling snow. Despite that it still managed to capture a few useful shots."

She gestured to the big TV again as she opened up another image on her laptop. A moment later we were all staring at a fuzzy black and white image showing a dark figure just outside the cave. It was hard to make out details, but it was pretty clear we were looking at a person in winter boots, dark pants, a dark jacket, with a hood up covering their head. They had a backpack over one shoulder, and they were crouching down so they could get into the cave.

After we'd all studied that picture for a minute or two Paige moved on to the next one, which seemed to depict some glowing light deep within the cave. The next couple images were the same, something in the cave was glowing. And the last pictures of the sequence showed that same dark figure emerging. Their face was hidden in shadow under their hood so we couldn't really identify them, but it was better than nothing.

"According to the timestamps of those images," Paige explained, "Our mystery person arrived at the cave around half past eleven the night of the full moon. The strange glows were timestamped from right around midnight, and the shot of them leaving was from twenty minutes after midnight Friday morning."

Brooke added, "I'm almost positive the figure is male. Based on how he's crouching going in he's probably about my height or Paige's height. He looks like he's wearing a few layers, winter jacket over a hoodie, but I'd say he's got a slim build? Maybe athletic, but it's hard to tell. Obviously we can't see his face or hair or anything like that."

"There were no prints either," Paige continued. "By the time we went back on Sunday there'd been so much fresh snow the cave entrance was half closed up again, any prints from Thursday night or Friday morning were long gone."

Kaylee asked, "Did you two go into the cave again? Either on Wednesday or Sunday?"

"No," Paige shook her head. "Last Wednesday we were a little freaked out at the idea of someone else getting pictures of us so we set up the cam and got the heck out of there. Same thing Sunday, we just went straight in and grabbed the trail-cam then straight out again."

Cerys suggested, "I bet the midnight visitor was there for the Hecate ritual stuff? He's probably a new age pagan or Wiccan."

Our club leader shrugged, "Maybe? Cerys you were going to look into those chalk markings, did you find anything?"

The young blonde smiled, "I sure did. Cass was right about the text. I found a word-for-word copy of the invocation, it looks like it was first published in some Wiccan book about a decade ago."

She continued, "That's just the text that was inside the circle. The symbols around the outside weren't part of the published ritual, but a couple of them looked like the sorts of glyphs you'd see in old books on alchemy? I'm positive that guy in your trail-cam pictures is using the cave to perform rituals to Hecate. He's using a totally modern ritual, and adding in some personal elements. Those glowing pictures you caught are probably just the light from his candles, and I bet if we explore the cave again we'll find fresh wax drippings. Maybe more eggshells too."

Paige thanked her for that, then she looked at me and Nina and Kaylee. "Cass, Nina, did you talk to your moms about any of this?"

I nodded, "We showed our parents pictures of the glyphs by the entrance, but neither of them recognized any of the markings."

"I also asked if they knew about any supernaturals that live in caves around here," Nina added. "Or that use caves? They didn't know anything about that either though."

The tall brunette nodded, "Thanks for checking. Kaylee, did your research turn up anything?"

My girlfriend shook her head, "Nothing. I compared those glyphs to every magical or runic reference I could find, but I got nothing. There were a couple that had some similarities, but only superficially."

"I had pretty much the same result," Paige sighed. "I'm actually wondering if those markings at the front of the cave are some sort of hoax. Or maybe they were bait, to get us there so someone else could get pictures of us. In which case, the Hecate ritual further back in the cave could be a completely unrelated thing."

Cerys had a grin on her face as she looked like she had something she wanted to say, and as soon as Paige was quiet the blonde wolfgirl spoke up.

"I did some research of my own on those carved glyphs," she stated, "And unlike you two I found a couple matches."

Kaylee sounded surprised, "Where? What sort of runes are they? I thought I checked every possibility."

"They're not runes," Cerys replied, with a bit of a smug look on her face. "I wasn't just looking at magic books or runic references, I searched for the symbols without any context. And I came up with two results."

"So what are they? Don't keep us in suspense," Brooke stated.

It almost felt like Cerys was channeling her old self a bit, with the smug grin and confident tone in her voice as she answered, "The right-most column of glyphs was duplicated almost exactly, but in a much larger scale, when it appeared as a crop circle in Devon in the UK in the nineteen-seventies. And the same glyphs but in different sequences were found carved into the wall of a cave in Kentucky in the USA, back in the nineteen-fifties."

There were a few groans and eye-rolls when she mentioned the crop circle. It seemed like Kaylee Brooke and Paige all had negative reactions to that news. Meanwhile both Melody and Nina looked interested.

The shape-shifter asked, "So I know crop circles are mostly supposed to be hoaxes, but they're also associated with UFOs right? Is that something Club Luna would look into? Or are we only focused on Earth-based supernatural stuff?"

Paige shook her head, "We don't do UFOs and we don't do crop circles."

"If UFOs or aliens exist that's way beyond anything we're experienced in," Brooke added. "And crop circles are pretty much universally accepted as man-made and hoaxes."

Cerys asked, "So what about the cave glyphs in Kentucky? Forget about the crop circles, we have similar glyphs appearing in two caves well over a thousand kilometres apart."

"Where'd you find out about the glyphs in Kentucky?" Kaylee asked. "How did you connect those to the glyphs we found last week?"

The blonde werewolf grimaced, "Reverse image search on the glyphs in our cave led to a website about UFO encounters and aliens living in caves."

Brooke responded, "So both your matches lead to aliens, is what you're saying."

"I think it confirms what I said earlier?" Paige sighed. "Those markings at the front of the cave were probably planted there. Someone found that same resource you did Cerys, copied the glyphs and scratched them into the side of that cave for us to find. Then they set up a trail-cam and started texting Brooke, to try and get us out there to investigate."

Cerys looked grumpy as she admitted, "Maybe. But who would do that? And why? It sounds like an awful lot of trouble just to get pictures of us. I mean if someone knows us well enough to lure us out there with some weird text messages, they probably know us well enough to check our social media accounts and download all the selfies they want."

"That's a good point," I agreed. "What's the benefit to luring us into a nature reserve and getting a few pictures of us? Even if they got pictures of Melanie's ears and tail that wouldn't prove anything."

The young wolfgirl added, "And it still doesn't explain everything. The noises we heard, the light I saw, the sudden movement of air? I'm sure there's something strange going on there. I'm not saying it's all unexplained, maybe some stuff was faked? But I think we should go back and have another look at it. We'll be more prepared too, like with proper flashlights and better cameras and everything."

Paige asked her, "I take it you didn't get anything meaningful out of Kaylee's recording or the janky video I uploaded?"

"Not really," Cerys sighed. "The pictures I tried to take of the footprints didn't turn out either, the camera on my phone's not that great. But that's why I think we need to go back? And now that we know we're going to be exploring a cave we can be properly prepared."

Melody shook her head, "I know this isn't what you want to hear, but I'm not sure it's safe to go exploring unknown caves, especially that one."

That got her a couple questioning looks, so she elaborated "I was looking at some of the stuff you all posted during the break, and mentioned to my boyfriends that you'd found a cave there? Don't worry, I haven't told either of them about the club or mentioned any names or anything. I just said some friends of mine discovered a cave and were checking it out. Anyways Craig is taking a mining technology course and he's got a good handle on a lot of our local geology around southern Ontario. He pulled up some information about the area around that nature reserve. According to him, the terrain is mostly a 'glacial till moraine', which is basically loose aggregate under the soil. He said caves would be rare but they'd definitely be unstable, and would be prone to collapse and cave-ins."

"That might explain why it seems to be an unknown cave," Paige responded. "I did some searching and near as I can tell that cave doesn't appear on any maps of known caves. There's a few spelunking clubs around, and they've mapped a lot of caves, but nobody seems to know about that one. Maybe the entrance only opened up recently, like from a landslide or something? It's on the side of a hill after all."

Cerys frowned, "I still think we need to have a closer look at it. And it can't be that dangerous if someone's going in there at midnight every full moon to do their Wiccan rituals."

That sparked a little debate, as Paige Cerys Kaylee and Brooke all argued whether Club Luna should keep investigating it or if we should avoid it. We still had a couple mysteries, like who sent us there in the first place and why, and who's using the cave to invoke Hecate and why. On the other side was the possible safety issues, if the cave was unstable and stuff, and the worry that someone was watching us or studying us.

In the end the only thing we all agreed on was if we were going to revisit the cave, it wasn't going to happen until after the weather was nicer. In the meantime we'd continue trying to learn what we could about it through more research and stuff like that.

Cerys was a bit grumpy that we weren't going to rush back out to the cave right away, but she accepted the compromise with the promise that the club would consider going back again later.

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